VERSAFLOW at MSC
MSC Freiburg Solders With Ersa
MSC Freiburg GmbH is a development and production service provider for electronic assemblies as well as electromechanical systems. The success of the system house is based on their use of technically sophisticated equipment for safe and controllable processes in production, as is demonstrated in the Ersa selective soldering system in their board assembly department.
MSC Freiburg was formed in 2001 out of GE Medical System IT as a service provider forthe sectors electronics, development and production. At MSC, customers are assisted, right from the start of the product idea and up to its market introduction, by experienced application and development engineers. Today's product portfolio includes, aside from medical technology and industrial electronics, telematics for commercial vehicles and security systems.
Extending technological advantages
The competition in electronics manufacturing has gotten much keener, cost pressures as well as demands for an increase in quality while at the same time reducing lead times are forcing a rethink. This entails for the MSC team: continuous optimization of the production sequences and increasing the technological-economic advantages.
In addition, the fact that component density on printed circuit boards continuously increases while spacing decreases, adds an additional challenge especially to the soldering process. This is compounded by the increasing number of SMD components. "At the beginning, we could handle the issue with gluing the components on the underside of the board and then solder with the wave," says Holger Herbstritt, Manager of the Design Center. "For eight years now are we looking at the selective soldering process, and we had bought a small system. But the demands continuously increased, so that pretty soon it had reached its limits. Our aim now was to get a faster, more flexible selective soldering system, with more capacity to achieve a higher throughput." The result: The Ersa VERSAFLOW 3 with the capability to handle boards up to 400 x 500 mm, a system, which had proven itself at its parent company. Evaluation started beginning 2013, and in September the system hit the production department in Freiburg – installed within 3 days which included training. What followed was a period of validation and a test phase, during which the VF 3 was put through its paces. Thereafter, the MSC technicians could, without any problems, pull all the products over to the VF 3 and solder.
Soldering without Compromises
Configurable with nearly no limits, the VERSAFLOW is optimally suitable for the demands of MSC, with an adaptation to future demands any time possible through the addition of further modules. At this time, mainly boards produced in-house are passing through the system, boards that are installed in trucks, tractors, computer controls, x-ray systems or home entertainment.
Division Manager PCB Assembly Rinaldi Concetta comments on the soldering system: "With the dual pot system the process time was virtually halved, so that we are substantially faster and able to increase the throughput when processing multiple-ups. An additional benefit turned out to be the fact that we have almost no need for rework, since the system delivers high quality joints." The production in the Freiburg facility appreciates the user-friendly and low-maintenance performance of the VF 3 - with it, the MSC team is well set to meet all demands presented to it, today as well as tomorrow.